The Getty Museum has acquired a larger-than-life-sized portrait bust of the emperor Antoninus Pius from a private collection in England. It is one of the finest surviving portraits of Antoninus Pius, but previously unpublished until it appeared at auction last year. The deal isn’t quite done yet — the museum awaits an export license from the UK Ministry of Culture — but should it go through, the bust will go on display alongside the Getty Villa’s other important Antonine-period sculptures.

A prime example of Antoninus Pius’s main portrait type, the bust was created sometime after he ascended the throne in AD 138. With minor variations, this portrait type remained the emperor’s official image throughout his reign until AD 161. Carved from a single block of fine-grained white marble, the bust shows the emperor as a mature man with distinct facial features, a full, neatly trimmed beard, and thick curly hair. He wears a tunic, a cuirass (body armor), and a fringed paludamentum (a general’s cloak) folded in half and pinned at his right shoulder.

“This exquisitely sculpted and remarkably preserved portrait ranks among the finest of more than 100 versions of Antoninus’s image that have survived from antiquity,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum. “The bust adds a new highlight to the series of high-quality imperial portraits at the Getty Villa, including the full-length statue of Antoninus’ wife Faustina the Elder, and the busts of Augustus, Germanicus, Caligula, and Commodus.” […]

“Many objects in our collection were made in the Antonine period, as it is known today, including portraits, mythological sculptures, sarcophagi, and numerous other works,” says Jens Daehner, associate curator of antiquities at the Getty Museum. “The bust of Antoninus provides a firmly dated visual reference for what characterized Roman aesthetics during that period. On display in our galleries, the bust will convey to visitors how, for example, Antonine sculptors carved drapery folds, used drills to give texture to hair, or incised the eyes of their sitters.”

Believed to have been discovered in Pozzuoli in the 19th century, the bust is first documented in 1851 when it was bought by Robert Martin Berkeley (1823-1897) and his bride Lady Mary Catherine Berkeley (1829-1924) on their honeymoon. Berkeley’s honeymoon diary records buying the bust on June 11, 1851, from antiques shop of dealer Raffaello Barone on Via Costantinopoli in Naples’ historic center. He paid 240 ducats (about $5400 today, adjusted for inflation). The newlyweds brought it home to Spetchley Park in Worcestershire where it has remained all these years until the descendants sold it last December.

This bust has many features in common with a bust in the collection of Castle Howard in Yorkshire. The carving of the draping, fibula and fringe of the paludamentum is so similar in both busts that it is probably they were produced by the same workshop.

Antoninus Pius (b. 86 – d. 161 A.D.) was the adopted son and successor of Hadrian (b. 76 –  d. 138 A.D.) and the uncle, father-in-law and adoptive father of Marcus Aurelius (b. 121 –  d. 180 A.D.). Marcus Aurelius wrote an extraordinary tribute to Pius in the Meditations. In the First Notebook, Marcus lists the things he learned from people who were formative influences in his development as a philosopher, emperor and man of virtue. The entry on his father is the only description of an emperor written by another emperor who knew him as family, friend and mentor and it was never intended for publication. Marcus’ notebooks were journals, not letters, not inscriptions, not future memoirs, so what Marcus writes about Pius is a deeply personal assessment of his father’s many strengths and virtues. For Marcus, Pius was the Stoic ideal as man and emperor.

XIII. In my father, I observed his meekness; his constancy without wavering in those things, which after a due examination and deliberation, he had determined. How free from all vanity he carried himself in matter of honour and dignity, (as they are esteemed:) his laboriousness and assiduity, his readiness to hear any man, that had aught to say tending to any common good: how generally and impartially he would give every man his due; his skill and knowledge, when rigour or extremity, or when remissness or moderation was in season; how he did abstain from all unchaste love of youths; his moderate condescending to other men’s occasions as an ordinary man, neither absolutely requiring of his friends, that they should wait upon him at his ordinary meals, nor that they should of necessity accompany him in his journeys; and that whensoever any business upon some necessary occasions was to be put off and omitted before it could be ended, he was ever found when he went about it again, the same man that he was before.

His accurate examination of things in consultations, and patient hearing of others. He would not hastily give over the search of the matter, as one easy to be satisfied with sudden notions and apprehensions. His care to preserve his friends; how neither at any time he would carry himself towards them with disdainful neglect, and grow weary of them; nor yet at any time be madly fond of them. His contented mind in all things, his cheerful countenance, his care to foresee things afar off, and to take order for the least, without any noise or clamour.

Moreover how all acclamations and flattery were repressed by him: how carefully he observed all things necessary to the government, and kept an account of the common expenses, and how patiently he did abide that he was reprehended by some for this his strict and rigid kind of dealing. How he was neither a superstitious worshipper of the gods, nor an ambitious pleaser of men, or studious of popular applause; but sober in all things, and everywhere observant of that which was fitting; no affecter of novelties: in those things which conduced to his ease and convenience, (plenty whereof his fortune did afford him,) without pride and bragging, yet with all freedom and liberty: so that as he did freely enjoy them without any anxiety or affectation when they were present; so when absent, he found no want of them.

Moreover, that he was never commended by any man, as either a learned acute man, or an obsequious officious man, or a fine orator; but as a ripe mature man, a perfect sound man; one that could not endure to be flattered; able to govern both himself and others. Moreover, how much he did honour all true philosophers, without upbraiding those that were not so; his sociableness, his gracious and delightful conversation, but never unto satiety; his care of his body within bounds and measure, not as one that desired to live long, or over-studious of neatness, and elegancy; and yet not as one that did not regard it: so that through his own care and providence, he seldom needed any inward physic, or outward applications: but especially how ingeniously he would yield to any that had obtained any peculiar faculty, as either eloquence, or the knowledge of the laws, or of ancient customs, or the like; and how he concurred with them, in his best care and endeavour that every one of them might in his kind, for that wherein he excelled, be regarded and esteemed: and although he did all things carefully after the ancient customs of his forefathers, yet even of this was he not desirous that men should take notice, that he did imitate ancient customs.

Again, how he was not easily moved and tossed up and down, but loved to be constant, both in the same places and businesses; and how after his great fits of headache he would return fresh and vigorous to his wonted affairs. Again, that secrets he neither had many, nor often, and such only as concerned public matters: his discretion and moderation, in exhibiting of the public sights and shows for the pleasure and pastime of the people: in public buildings, congiaries, and the like.

In all these things, having a respect unto men only as men, and to the equity of the things themselves, and not unto the glory that might follow. Never wont to use the baths at unseasonable hours; no builder; never curious, or solicitous, either about his meat, or about the workmanship, or colour of his clothes, or about anything that belonged to external beauty. In all his conversation, far from all inhumanity, all boldness, and incivility, all greediness and impetuosity; never doing anything with such earnestness, and intention, that a man could say of him, that he did sweat about it: but contrariwise, all things distinctly, as at leisure; without trouble; orderly, soundly, and agreeably.

A man might have applied that to him, which is recorded of Socrates, that he knew how to want, and to enjoy those things, in the want whereof, most men show themselves weak; and in the fruition, intemperate: but to hold out firm and constant, and to keep within the compass of true moderation and sobriety in either estate, is proper to a man, who hath a perfect and invincible soul.

The ancient bronze statue of a Winged Victory that has become a symbol of the city of Brescia in Lombardy, northern Italy, has returned to its original home, the city’s 1st century Capitoline Temple. It has been installed in the eastern cell of the Capitolium in a new layout that incorporates the iconic bronze (and several of its brethren) into its monumental surroundings.

Brescia’s earliest antecedents go back to 1,200 B.C. with a settlement of the ancient Italic Ligures. In the 7th century, Celtic Cenomani crossed the Alps and made the town in the foothills their capital. Unlike neighboring tribes, the Cenomani were allies of Rome and consistently sided with them against all enemies foreign (Carthage) and domestic (the Insubres). When the Insubres and other Gallic peoples in northern Italy joined together to march on Rome in 225 B.C., the Cenomani fought with the Roman Republic and its central Italian allies against their Celtic kindred.

It maintained its allegiance in the Social Wars of the 1st century B.C. when the Italic peoples rebelled against Rome. In reward, Brescia, then known as Brixia, was given civitas (“city”) status in 89 B.C. and 50 years later, its residents were granted full Roman citizenship by Julius Caesar. To celebrate the granting of Latin Rights, a sanctuary was built on the city’s main thoroughfare. Four large rectangular halls, each with its own entrance via a pronaos (columned portico) were built and decorated with vivid frescoes and inlaid wall. The exquisite workmanship is characteristic of high-end craftsmen from central Italy. Brixia wanted only the best to show off its official acceptance into Rome’s legal and cultural fold.

The Republican shrine lasted less than a century. Brixia supported Vespasian when he vied for the throne during the Year of Four Emperors (69 A.D.), and after he was victorious he had a new temple to the Capitoline Triad (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva) constructed over the Republican shrine. The bronze Winged Victory dates to this reconstruction.

She was beloved by the people of Brixia and we know this because they removed her and concealed her for her safety, likely in the late 4th or early 5th century. Eastern Emperor Theodosius I (r. 379-395) had taken decisive action to suppress paganism and many temples were destroyed in the process. Then came the invasions. Alaric devastated Brixia in 402. Atilla’s Huns sacked it even harder 50 years later. Somewhere in all this devastation, the people of Brixia collected its greatest bronze treasures — Winged Victory, six imperial portrait busts, at least three of them gilded, an incredible rare horse breastplate from an equestrian statue — and a pile of bronze frames, rings and fragments and stashed them in a cavity between the western wall of the temple and Cidneo Hill behind it.

The gods must have been looking out for their devotional art, because the treasure was submerged by a landslide that also covered the temple itself. The bronzes were kept safe under that landslide layer for centuries. They were rediscovered in 1826 in an excavation of the forum and Capitoline area. It was one of the largest and most significant collections of Roman bronzes ever found, and Winged Victory in particular captured the romantic imagination as a symbol of Italian patriotism in Brescia, then part of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, an Austrian vassal state established at the Congress of Vienna after the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815.

The bronzes find a permanent home in 1998 when the Santa Giulia Museum opened. In 2019, a new restoration of the Winged Victory was undertaken. Using the latest metal composition analysis, researchers discovered just how special she was. Originally experts believed the wings were added during the Vespasian era of construction to what had been a Hellenistic statue of Aphrodite, but the composition of the bronze confirmed that in fact all of the metal, wings, body and head, came from the same foundry at the same time. She was always a Winged Victory.

On Sunday the Santa Giulia Museum debuted its new Roman gallery, displaying its magnificent Roman cultural patrimony in a newly-designed, lit, accessible space that will give visitors a fresh understanding of ancient Brixia based on the latest research. The Winged Victory is now on display in the Capitolium next to the six portrait busts that were her roommates for 1500 years and with a second deposit of objects discovered in the excavation of the Capitoline Temple area.

Made of bronze using the technique of lost-wax casting and gilding only on the male ones, the portraits must have been inserted into stone or marble statues, as indicated by the careful finishing of the neck flaps. They were most likely displayed in a public space in the city and may have represented emperors or members of the imperial family. The features of the faces and hair allowed the figures to be identified with members of the Flavian dynasty and with emperors of the second and third centuries CE.

The other deposit, never shown in its entirety, includes a considerable amount of votive objects offered in the temple halls by worshippers during the life of this place of worship; these include rare engraved glass, such as the bottle with reproductions of views of cities of the Phlegraean area, jewelry, ritual objects, including the precious knife with a deer horn handle, simple and figured oil lamps, amphorae, large plates for ritual offerings, mold-decorated ceramics, and much more. […]

Other finds of particular value and interest include the bronze horse breastplate (balteo), a unique specimen throughout the empire, probably belonging to an equestrian statue displayed in one of the public spaces of ancient Brixia, on the surface of which numerous bronze figures have been applied, depicting Roman soldiers, with helmet and armor, and barbarians, with long hair, breeches and short cape, engaged in an access combat, and in the center stands out the figure of the emperor on horseback bursting among the soldiers.

A sword in Chicago’s Field Museum long believed to be a replica has been identified as an authentic Bronze Age sword dating to between 1080 and 900 B.C. The sword was retrieved from the Danube in Budapest in the 1930s. When it was acquired by the Field Museum shortly after its discovery, the sword was part of a large consignment of artifacts that were a mixture of authentic archaeological objects and replicas. This one was misidentified when it arrived and it stayed that way for almost a hundred years.

Its true identity was rediscovered when curators were preparing for the upcoming exhibition, First Kings of Europe. This exhibition explores how communities on the Balkan Peninsula transformed from small agrarian villages to enormously wealthy kingdoms between the Neolithic and Iron Age periods (6,000-500 B.C.) and brings together more than 200 artifacts from 11 countries, many of them never seen before in the United States. Hungarian archaeologists working with Fields Museum curators on First Kings of Europe asked to see that “replica” from Hungary and recognized it immediately as the genuine article.

The group of Field Museum scientists, including a chemist, and archeologists used an X-ray fluorescence detector, an instrument that looks like a ray gun. When they compared the sword’s chemical makeup to other known Bronze Age swords in Europe, their content of bronze, copper, and tin were nearly identical.

Bill Parkinson, a curator of anthropology at the Field who helped create the upcoming First Kings of Europe exhibition, says he was surprised by the results. “Usually this story goes the other way round,” he says– “What we think is an original turns out to be a fake.”

The sword was confirmed authentic too late to be included in with the other Bronze Age objects in the exhibition, but it will be installed in the main hall of the Field Museum instead to usher visitors in to the exhibition. The First Kings of Europe opens on March 31, 2023.